Impact of voice- and knowledge-enabled clinical reporting--US example

• HIT Description: Hypothetical voice- and knowledge-enabled clinical reporting systems. More info...
  
• Purpose of Study: Show qualitative and quantitative estimates of the national and the clinical level impact of utilizing voice and knowledge enabled clinical reporting systems
  
• Years of study: Not Available
  
• Study Design: Illustrative return-on-investment (ROI) analysis
  
• Outcomes: cost savings, compliance, clinical outcomes, and patient satisfaction
  

• Settings: Hypothetical physician groups
• Evaluation Method: Illustrative return-on-investment (ROI) analysis
• HIT System: Hypothetical voice- and knowledge-enabled clinical reporting systems.
• Implementation: The authors introduced voice-enabled and guidelines-based clinical reporting and described a three-step learning process for its adoption.
• Costs: 1) Structured voice-enabled and guideline-based dictations: The cost of purchasing and installing voice-enabled and guidelines-based clinical reporting software and related hardware is about $6,000 per physician (not stated as to year, presumably 2001 dollars). 2) Unstructured free-text dictations: The system with natural intelligent language technology is as low as $499 per physician, or $2,500 per physician including hardware purchase and installation. 3) Unstructured free-text dictation with back-end correction: The cost is 150% of unstructured free text dictation due to the cost of correctionist.
• Clinical Outcomes: The voice-recognition and knowledge-enabled clinical reporting system may help an organization to meet outcomes analysis requirements. The accurate and complete documentation will decrease liability risk and problems during audits and reduce liability exposure. In addition, such systems have the potential to improve accuracy of the information in the clinical reports and thus reduce errors and improve clinical outcomes, as well as patient satisfaction.
• Changes in efficiency and productivity: The authors estimated the cost-savings of the system by eliminating transcription and clerical work of filing the clinical reports. The estimation was based on two examples, one national and one large clinic example. The authors predicted that, if only 14 percent of all US physicians (100,000 physicians) adopted voice enabled clinical dictation systems, a potential of about 730 million health care dollars could be saved. In the scenario of a large clinic (100 physicians), a saving of $730,000 is estimated.